VICTORIA — Oblivious to the critics, the B.C. Liberals are continuing with a two-pronged political advertising strategy, using public money to boast of their record and private money to attack the New Democrats.

Television is carrying the latest round of ads in a $15-million public-funded campaign touting the B.C. Jobs plan and related efforts to balance the budget, hold down taxes, promote economic growth and train workers for the jobs of the future.

Informational advertising, the Liberals call it, though one can’t help noting the cautionary message against the threat of “unstable policies,” “big governments,” “careless spending” and “quick fixes.”

No names. But I assume the initials they had in mind were NDP.

The blitz was particularly noticeable in spots aired during last week’s football playoff game, provoking the New Democratic Party to step up its counter-attack against the use of public money for partisan political purposes.

Opposition leader Adrian Dix called a press conference Monday to announce a Stop Partisan Ads petition campaign, run from the party website. He also vowed that if the NDP forms the next government, “we won’t see partisan ads like this, particularly in advance of an election.”

No details. But I gather that he and his advisers have been looking at the system brought in by the Liberal government of the province of Ontario, where an outright ban on the use of public funds for partisan advertising is enforced by the independent auditor general.

Here in B.C., the Liberals figure the backlash is mainly driven by NDP partisans and not likely to be a deciding factor in the election. They also believe that the ads will help build confidence in the province at a time of global economic anxiety.

They insist, bolstered by the feedback from their own focus groups, that people find the ads to be informative. Particularly on matters that have not been widely communicated by the news media, such as B.C. having the lowest income taxes in the country for folks making under $125,000.

The negative prong of the Liberal communications strategy also stood revealed this week in a memo from a privately funded group of supporters calling themselves the Concerned Citizens for British Columbia.

The four-page memo obtained by Jonathan Fowlie of The Vancouver Sun outlined a defence of the Liberal record coupled with a range of concerns about the NDP: “A focus on taxation, regulation and unionization appear to be the direction of Adrian Dix but he is not talking ... are you comfortable with that? We are not.”

The memo lamented that “while the NDP have enjoyed support from the unions in the media there has not been any counter force supporting the BC Liberals from people like us who wish to see the success of our free enterprise form of government.”

Thus the goal of the self-designated CC4BC: “We have set the goal to deliver our meaningful message to every household in B.C. before the election starts in April. The cost of such a bold undertaking is $1 million.”

For all the attention-grabbing potential of a $1-million price tag, the Liberals figure those dollars won’t be enough to match the anticipated counter-attack from the trade union movement and other friends of the NDP.

Unions and labour groups spent $3 million on advertising in the 2005 provincial election, much of it in an attempt to defeat the B.C. Liberals. Leading the list with an expenditure of $1.5 million was the B.C. Teachers’ Federation.

Then again, the concerned citizens are not likely to be alone in taking on the NDP. Other groups will have their own war chests, plus the Liberal party itself is expected to join the game in a big and a negative way.

The Liberals are well aware of the potential backlash over going negative. Lowering the tone of debate. Turning off voters. The risk that the ads will backfire.

But as with the publicly funded feel-good ads, the Liberals intend to persist in the negative part of the pitch because they believe it needs to be done.

Dix, though leading the opinion polls, is still a largely unknown quantity with the B.C. public. And as the Liberals see it, he has been given an easy ride by the provincial news media.

So the governing party and its supporters are going to try to define him as an untrustworthy relic of the last NDP government, rooted in the ideological left and masquerading as a moderate in order to get elected.

Based on what the effort has produced to date, I doubt the rebranding will be all that successful. The recent attempt by the concerned citizens’ group to frame Dix as “Hurricane Adrian” was amateurish in the extreme.

But as has been seen in campaigns here and elsewhere, negative advertising can be effective, particularly with undecided voters and those who don’t pay attention to politics until the last days of the campaign.

And based on the stakes — the prize is the right to govern British Columbia for four years, after all — I’d expect to read, hear and see a lot of negative ads before the votes are counted May 14.

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